Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve

[Fiction]

The roofs in the Hidden Leaf village were considered free property for shinobi to traverse through. Any day, one could spot at least two dozen shinobi jumping from roof to roof to avoid the roads crowded with slow civilians.

Takuma looked down at the road street from a tall roof in a residential area. He stepped back and ran to the next roof, jumping over a gap between the buildings that would've made him pee a little even thinking about jumping if he was in his previous body. His new body, though— his shinobi body could put any professional traceurs, individuals who practiced parkour, to shame. He had strength, balance, dexterity, and nimbleness that allowed him to be as comfortable between buildings and roofs as he would be on a flat road.

He again stepped near the ledge and observed Taro and Masaaki walking on the road. The rookie genins were made to walk a beat in a part of a village as part of guard duty— they would walk the streets, converse with the people they met on the way, keep up to date with the events in the area, and help anyone who they could.

However, as this was part of the basic training, Yoshio instructed them to only have two people on the road while the other three would watch over them as part of a stealth and backup simulation. Takuma peered at the buildings across the street and saw Nenro also skipping through the rooftops of the buildings and keeping an eye on the two walking the road. As for Ai, she was somewhere hidden doing the same job— he had lost sight of her, which meant she was doing a good job.

Basic training hadn't been what he expected. The training was tough, but nothing he hadn't done with Maruboshi. Takuma still started his training at four in the morning (he did it alone as Maruboshi had started retaking regular missions) before going to the genin basic training. He trained in different things, involving his team and group under Yoshio, who did hit him- well, everyone- a lot. The chunin instructor, in only their first week, threw a shuriken into one of his genins' palms after an argument before nonchalantly calling for the Iryo-nin.

As long as the shady guy chunin— Takuma still didn't know his name— could heal the injury, Yoshio would inflict it as a punishment. Takuma had gotten his thigh bone bruised and suffered micro-fractures that had pained him so much when Yoshio had made him walk to the shady guy sitting halfway across the field to get healed.

The thing that disappointed Takuma was that they were still going through academy-level stuff that everyone could do. Everyone knew how to do it, but Yoshio ordered them to train them anyways and would punish them for even the most minor mistakes. Takuma hoped they would move on to something new.

"What are you thinking about?"

Takuma skipped on his feet, shifting his weight on the ball of his feet, as he twisted back with a kunai already in his hand to slash the person who had sneaked up on him.

*Scrriiing!*

His kunai met another as sparks flew on contact. Takuma immediately overpowered his opponent and was about to push them back to get some space and launch the next attack when he noticed that the supposed foe was his female teammate.

"What were you thinking sneaking up on me like that?!" Takuma said as he stepped back and loosened his grip on his kunai. One didn't just sneak up on a shinobi like that and not expect to get stabbed in the face.

He sighed; he still needed to get used to his new teammate's antics.

Ai stuck out her tongue and twirled her kunai with her finger in the ring. Among Takuma's team, Ai was the mood-maker with her outgoing character. In the team with quiet characters such as Takuma and Taro, Ai was the one who struck up conversations that involved the entire group. Even Masaaki, the friendliest of them all, and Nenro, the most popular guy of the rookie genins, followed Ai's lead in conversations.

Takuma was sure if Ai was in his previous world, she would be successful as a streamer or any internet personality.

"Why're you here?" he asked.

"Nothing happens during patrolling. I was getting bored. I wish something would happen, anything," Ai shrugged as she followed Takuma to the next roof.

"Nothing happening is good for us," said Takuma, still keeping an eye on the road from every successive rooftop. But he didn't tell her to go away— he was also getting bored.

"Hey, do you think we will ace the board this week?" Ai asked.

Group Yoshio Weekly Rankings. The five teams would compete throughout the week in every activity in hopes of being at the top of the group's weekly rankings. There was no set scoreboard, and Yoshio didn't reveal the running order until the very last day while announcing the winner— nor did he specify a point system that would help them estimate their ranking. Because of that, every team had to be on top of their game throughout the week, fearing that some other team had taken their spot the other day.

"We haven't done anything different than the last three weeks, so I don't think so," Takuma said.

"But we are doing everything we can," Ai grumbled before doing a flip between two buildings. "I really want us to win this week!"

The rankings reset every week, and their group had been consistently in second and third position every week, while every other team was wildly inconsistent in their rankings. Takuma was sure when the points for every week were tallied, they would be favorites for entry into the final tournament. However, that wasn't enough. Coming first in the weekly rankings came with a reward in the form of mission points.

Mission points were the other currency in the Leaf shinobi military other than money. In many ways, mission points were more important than ryo, as jutsu from the jutsu library could only be accessed by paying through mission points. As the name suggested, mission points were earned by completing missions. The genin in basic training weren't allowed to apply to official missions to earn mission points.

So for Takuma, the only way to earn mission points was through topping Group Yoshio's Weekly Rankings.

"The way I see it, we need to win the fights if we want to top the rankings," Takuma said as he stopped on a rooftop and watched the building across the street as Nenro ran through the roof while a young man hung his washed laundry on the clothing line to dry. Nenro apologetically nodded for disturbing the man and immediately jumped to the next roof.

Ai giggled at the sight. She then asked, "Taro said something like that, right?"

Takuma nodded. Taro had pointed out that the teams that grabbed the first place in the last three weeks had collectively won most fights throughout the week. He had shown them a tally as proof that he had drafted sometime they weren't looking.

"Yoshio said that the final tournament is a competition among instructors, and I'm pretty sure they have put money into it. I mean, why wouldn't they. So, by giving out mission points, Yoshio is trying to reward the team with the combat ability who would then win him the final tournament," Takuma analyzed. If the other teams hadn't figured it out yet, it was only a matter of time before everyone did.

Combined with Taro's win tally, it was safe to infer that fights had a considerable weight in Yoshio's secret/internal grading system.

"Uhm, that's gonna to be tough," Ai said with a little blush on her cheeks.

Takuma was no longer the weakest person among his peers. He had gone from the bottom of the barrel to the top fifteen out of the twenty-five people group. He didn't win any fights, but he had a better record than Ai, who won more than Taro. Nenro and Masaaki were the reason why their team was able to bag the third and sometimes second place— Nenro hovered in eleventh or tenth place, but it was Masaaki who consistently made it into the top ten rankings, which, other than him, was occupied by the clan and shinobi-born kids. The buzz-cut bald kid with gap between his front teeth hit like a tank.

"If we want to be on the top, you, me, and Taro will need to win more," said Takuma with a shrug. It was the plain truth. "That and complete the drills faster and better than everyone else— if we can do that, it's only natural we will be on the top."

"It sounds easy," she sighed.

"Not to me," Takuma pursed his lips and knew that she understood it as well. He had been trying to polish his taijutsu skills. He had observed Nenro and Masaaki fighting. They possessed a fluidity in their movement, and he tried to ask them what it was, but they didn't seem to know what he was pointing out. He lacked what they had.

If they wanted mission points, something needed to change soon.


———
.


The change came quickly.

"Today, we're going to work on chakra control," Yoshio announced after another grueling conditioning drill. He did his customary round through the grid and let his baton eat while correcting the postures. "Takuma, how did you train your chakra control— if you did, that is?"

"Through Leaf Concentration Practice, sir!" Takuma said in a sturdy voice, his body rigid in attention.

"So, what are we going to do today?"

Takuma thought about what they had been doing these days— the same old academy stuff, so he was going to repeat his words, but as the words formed in his throat, he felt Yoshio's heat behind him, and he swore he could feel the cold baton as well.

"The Tree-Climbing Practice, sir!" he took the risk and changed the answer at the last moment.

Yoshio, who had gripped his baton ready to strike Takuma, smacked it back into his palm and stared at the back of Takuma's head for a solid few seconds. Takuma felt the gaze trying to boil his brain through his skull.

"You're correct for a change," said Yoshi, "and you've ruined my day."

Takuma held back the biggest grin from splitting his face and put on his best stone-cold stoic face as Yoshio passed him by, giving him a displeased look.

"Today, we're going to learn the next step in improving your pathetic chakra control. Follow me! The last one to arrive will have to do thirty pushups with their heaviest teammate on their back," saying that Yoshio took off and the genin, who had just done a long conditioning drill, had to follow the absurd pace set by the chunin instructor.

Yoshio only stopped when they reached an area with a tall wall in the middle. It was just a single gray concrete wall just standing in the middle of the empty field. They had to crane up their necks to look at the wall that looked to be around four-story tall.

"Even though it's called the tree-climbing practice, you lot are going to do it on a wall," Yoshio said. He then paused and looked at Takuma. "So, you were technically wrong... this improves my mood."

Yoshio walked to the wall and started to climb up the wall without using his hands. He walked halfway, removed one of his legs, and crossed it over the other thigh. "Gather chakra in the bottom of your feet and climb the tree using the same concept of sticking as the leaf concentration practice. Just here, the weight is different, and the sole of your feet is a difficult place to gather chakra. If any of your numbskulls didn't know, better chakra control means you can cast jutsu easier. The second purpose is to develop a sense of building chakra in your body. A shinobi is constantly moving in the heat of battle, and processes like molding chakra and directing it gets difficult when most of your mind needs to focus on other things— you need to practice chakra control until it becomes instinctual, and the tree-climbing practice is the place where you start."

Yoshio jumped off the wall and landed on the ground with his bulky body throwing up a lot of dust. He continued, "This is how you're going to do it. You will climb up the wall and walk down the other side."

Then a grin appeared on Yoshio's face that disturbed Takuma. The sound of weight shifting of feet around him told that the rest of the group thought the same.

"The first team to complete the exercise successfully will be rewarded. All the members will get a very generous cache of mission points," Yoshio announced.

The moment Yoshio finished, Takuma knew how he was going to make up for the mission points he had lost out by not being the top team.





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[Zippogun]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[The Radiance]

Chakra control exercice... lmao, He must be the most proficient ninja in the leaf in that.

 

[Fiction]

If Takuma could say it, he would say it up close to Yoshio's face. For all his bulging muscles and overwhelming masculine energy, the chunin instructor was softer than Maruboshi. Takuma definitely feared Yoshio's metal baton, verbal harassment, and the punishments for mistakes, but he would take all of that in a heartbeat as opposed to the penalties that Maruboshi imposed upon failure. Even the much more difficult tree-walking practice didn't seem as daunting and dreadful as Maruboshi's version of leaf concentration practice with multiple objects of heavier and heavier weights with grinding penalties to the boot.

Takuma looked at his peers on either side as they started with a run up on the ground and used that momentum and speed to try rushing up the wall. He didn't know who started it, but soon everyone was using the same running approach. Only two people hadn't adopted the strategy— Takuma himself and Taro.

Takuma had his past trauma of wanting to fail the least, even if it meant he tried less than others— the trauma of losing money still haunted him. As for Taro, he simply stood at the back, observing everyone. Takuma gave Taro a fleeting glance before focusing on the wall in front of him.

While the tree-walking practice and leaf concentration practice operated on the same concept of 'sticking' using chakra, one key difference between the two exercises set them apart. The difference was the difference in mass(or force caused by mass) in action.

Yesterday, when Yoshio announced the tree-walking practice and the mission point reward, he had distributed the scroll on the tree-walking practice. Unlike a jutsu scroll, this scroll didn't have any hand seals and directions, as the exercise didn't need any. Instead, the tree-walking scroll was a theoretical research piece on how leaf concentration and tree-walking practice worked. And after having embarrassed himself in front of Maruboshi upon skipping the text walls in the Henge no Jutsu(Transformation Jutsu) scroll, Takuma had spent time reading the scroll in an effort to learn the technique quickly and bag the mission points.

Takuma placed his hand, palm flat, on the wall and channeled chakra through his chakra pathway system and out of the hand's tenketsu(chakra points). He pushed his hand down slightly, and instead of sticking, the hand slid down. Even the slightest tug was enough to dislodge his hand when he used the amount of chakra he used to stick a stack of coins.

'Mass's going to be key here,' Takuma thought as he pressed one finger on the wall and applied a constant downward pull, dragging his finger down— until it suddenly stopped as Takuma felt a force adhering his finger to the wall.

The theory scroll was complex. Takuma disliked that it was clearly written by an academician for other academics in the classic research paper language that had trumped him back at college when he needed to do secondary research for assignments and projects. He wasn't that. He hadn't researched chakra; his knowledge was that of a layman. Every sentence and paragraph had taken him thrice over to understand. But he had gained something out of it.

While twenty or so people ran toward the wall, Takuma stood near the wall with his hand raised straight above. He jumped as high as he could and tried to slap his hand on the wall at the top of his leap and keep them on the wall as he inevitably slid down. When compared to others, he looked downright stupid.

Nenro was doing the exercise beside him and asked, "Takuma, what are you doing?"

Takuma shushed harshly and said, "Go away, don't bother me," without looking at his teammate.

Takuma jumped again and slapped his hand at the peak of his vertical reach. He slid down again—but a tiny bit slower than before. He jumped again, and this time his hand was blown away from the wall as he crashed his back on the floor.

"Are you alright?!" Nenro came to him again.

"Yeah, yeah! I'm alright, thanks!" Takuma got up.

"Do you want me to help?" asked Nenro. Where Nenro practiced, there was a white chalk palm print on the wall fifteen feet above the ground.

Takuma shook his head at his teammate. "Maybe, tomorrow. But not today, my friend, not today," he smiled before facing the wall again.

Due to the nature of chakra 'sticking' where only the correct amount allowed perfect adhesion, anything less would form a weak bond, and anything more would blow the person or object away— Takuma couldn't stand on the ground and adhere his hands to the wall and start scaling the wall like Spiderman. Even if he stuck his hand on a spot and then tried to dangle from it, the weight change would erase the adhesion, and he would fall. If he tried to compensate chakra for the weight before dangling, his hand would be blown away as, at that moment, the chakra was much more than required for just the hand to stick.

Chakra 'sticking' was different from glue in such a way. Something Takuma had learned from the scroll.

He could dynamically regulate chakra as mass(or force) changed— which was needed to actually tree-walk as with every step, a force was applied on the surface, requiring a change in chakra quantity to maintain the adhesion— but his proficiency was still away from that level.

So, he jumped, and after numerous tries of slowly sliding down or being blown away... Slap! Takuma slapped his hand on the wall while simultaneously releasing chakra through tenketsu.

And with one hand stuck on the wall... he dangled.

Takuma looked down and he could see his feet off the ground. "Holy shit, I did it," he muttered to himself. He looked around, and he could see the other genin staring at him. He waved to Masaaki, who waved back with his jaw slightly open.

They had yet to be able to stick a point on the wall. All of them were trying to run up the wall, taking the next step as soon as possible before the loose adhesion on the foot collapsed due to excessive force so they could plant the other foot on a higher point. That wasn't true tree-walking.

Takuma remembered. Yoshio had walked up the wall and then had stopped halfway through and remained there, even removing one foot to showboat. Staying on the spot on a vertical surface— that was true tree-walking.

Looking up at the height of the wall, Takuma could see a lot of distance for him to cover. He raised his free hand and tried to place it on a higher spot, but in doing so, he put force on his adhered hand so he could push his body upwards a little— force increased, and the applied chakra was suddenly not enough to maintain the adhesion. Takuma's hand came off the wall, and he slid down rapidly.

Slap! He hurriedly slapped his other hand on the wall and applied the same amount of chakra he had done for the correct adhesion, and it worked; his fall stopped, and he dangled with his other hand supporting his weight. Only, instead of gaining height as he had attempted, he lost several feet of it.

"Shit," he cursed. Takuma sighed. He was now in the same position as the others. They could run up but not stick. He could stick but not climb up.

But he wasn't worried because he had read the scroll. He needed to increase the chakra output dynamically as the force against the wall increased.

'Do it slowly,' he thought— it was like letting up the clutch, you did it smoothly. He strained his arm as he pulled himself up and placed the other arm higher up on the wall, and in one fell swoop, he outputted the chakra on the higher hand while letting the lower one go.

"Okay!" Takuma yelled out loud, hyped for the one step he had taken.

He immediately tried to climb higher and ended up messing up the chakra output and ended up slipping a couple feet before catching himself. This time, he cursed himself out loud.

Climbing using chakra was different from traditional climbing, as Takuma wasn't using his legs to secure leverage. He used his hands as absolute holds and then pulled himself up with them without using his legs to push himself up. From the ground, it looked like he was dragging himself up the straight wall. Doing it this way was tiring— his shoulders, elbows, and wrists felt exhausted and weak. If he wanted the chakra to act like sticky gloves, he would need a lot of practice in regulating his chakra according to the force shifts— for now, he had to do it this way.

When he looked down, he saw that he was several meters high. He had already scaled three out of four stories height. Takuma looked up, and even though the slow deliberate climb had his body hurting, he raised his other hand.

He was going to make it to the top.


———
.


Yoshio, on the other side of the wall, sat on an outdoor chair with a report in his hand. Even though he was training genin brats, he still had to do damn paperwork.

'They need to pay me more for this shit,' he grumbled as he filled what felt like the hundredth dotted line.

He hadn't gone checked how his group was doing on the other side of the wall. They weren't academy students anymore, and it wasn't his responsibility to baby them. They needed to work hard if they wanted to succeed. He would go observe them secretly just before the end of the session (which was whenever he wanted it to end) to see who all was slacking and punish them like the pathetic weasels they were. He didn't mind if they hadn't made substantial progress. As long as they put in the work, they would eventually get it— which was the important thing. Of course, if someone showed substantial progress that satisfied him, they could slack off. Results did matter, after all.

"Wooh!"

He heard a voice and craned his neck up to see a figure standing on top of the wall with his hands raised up. He narrowed his eyes to identify who it was and his eyes widened when he saw it was Takuma.

The weakest of his group... of the current of the batch. The only one to fail two graduation attempts. Some failed one of them, but none failed two— none had done it in a while. Which was why it had been such a conversation among the instructor.

He was waiting to see a lazy brat unfit to be a shinobi walk into the basic training, and he was ready to whip the kid into a functional bottom-of-the-barrel genin, the type who eventually became career genin— but the person who walked on contradicted most he had seen on the report. Yes, he was barely skilled in the basic bukijutsu, but other than that, he was decently competent in taijutsu and could perform the academy three well (how much chakra he was wasting was another topic). He was disciplined and seemed to gel with his team. If Yoshio had to point something out, Takuma seemed a bit too rigid and needed to talk more.

He was no way the best genin he had got, but at the same time, he wasn't the worst he had seen. And he could appreciate those who put in the work.

'Didn't expect him to get to the top first,' Yoshio thought— he assumed it would be one of the clan kids.

But then he saw Takuma starting to climb down.

'What the hell's he doing?'

Takuma climbed down on his hands instead of his feet as he explicitly instructed. Yoshio could tell that Takuma was using chakra but on his hands and not his feet. And what was supposed to be the harder part of the challenge— as walking down the wall meant that gravity was now working in favor, which made sticking to the wall much harder while rapidly came down as opposed to when running up where you could lean your body forward while rushing; without proper technique, their hold would weaken, and they would plummet down— had turned into Takuma climbing down flat against the wall, looking foolish.

The climb down was excruciatingly slow, showing the boy's inexperience with the technique. Takuma eventually made his way to the bottom without messing up.

"Wooh!" celebrated the brat, his arms limp by his side.

"And what is this celebration for?" Yoshio asked as he got up with the baton in hand. "Genin Takuma, you do remember I said that the challenge would only be considered successful when you scaled and climbed down the wall without using your hands."

Takuma straightened up, assuming proper. He looked forward in the distance, not meeting Yoshio's eyes. "Sir, I remember, sir!" he said loudly.

"Then what was that you just did?"

"Sir, as you said, chakra is notoriously difficult to gather near the feet. However, it's the easiest to gather chakra in hands. I used my hands to familiarize myself with the process so that I'd be able to progress faster when I switch to feet, sir!" said Takuma.

Yoshio couldn't find words for a moment. The logic made sense. Because people used their hands so much in their daily lives, it was instinctively easier to gather chakra in their hands, as opposed to legs, which, while people regularly used a lot, were the furthest from the heart where chakra was produced.

He decided to throw a hypothetical at Takuma. "Do you not fear embarrassment that everyone will learn the technique when you are still floundering with your strange hand climbing, left behind alone?"

Takuma didn't look fazed at all. "Sir, I intend to win the mission points, sir!" he said.

Yoshio scoffed as any respectable instructor would do. "You need all of your team to complete the challenge before any other team. As it stands, you're the furthest behind everyone, which places your team behind everyone else."

But he could appreciate the effort and sentiment.

He decided to not punish the brat for making zero official progress.




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[Fiction]

"What are you doing today?"

Takuma raised his head from his feet to his three migrant teammates, who were looking at them with curious(or dubious) looks.

"Training for the tree-walking practice?" said Takuma, his tone twisting in the end. It was the second day after Yoshio adjusted their training regiment to add one and a half hours of tree-walking(which they did on a wall).

"It has 'practice' in the name, you know," Ai made air quotes. "It's the training exercise to improve our chakra control and walk on any surface... People don't train for a training exercise; that doesn't make sense."

Takuma raised a finger as he said, "Actually, that's not true. People who can't do a pushup can be taught to do the pushup motion against the flat wall, then at a slight angle, then on the floor with bent knees, basically making incremental progressions to the actual pushups. It works with a lot of exercises. I'm doing the same here."

"That's not the same! What you mentioned is raising the difficulty..."

Nenro noticed Ai fold her arm and step forward, her expression turning sharper. He intervened by placing his arm between Takuma and Ai. "What Ai is trying to say is if training for tree-climbing will involve some actual climbing?" Nenro asked.

"Huh? I climbed yesterday. Got to the top and down," Takuma had scuffed his hand badly by all the slipping and dragging his hands against the grainy concrete— nothing the shady guy couldn't fix, but still pretty painful after an hour and a half of dragging his hand against hard concrete.

"With legs, you dummy," said the usually cutesy girl of the group.

Nenro rubbed the top of Ai's head, squishing her neck down a bit. He said to Takuma, "You did something so different yesterday and somehow completed the challenge on your hands. It was startling. So when we saw you doing something else again, we got interested. Maybe it would help us complete the challenge quicker?"

"Teach us!" Masaaki's voice in the short distance rattled the other's ears.

Takuma shrugged. He had no qualms about telling them. They were his teammates, and if he wanted to win the mission points, he needed his team to be the first to complete the challenge.

"Okay, so listen, yesterday after training—"

"Wait, let me get Taro," Ai interrupted and ran off to get their last teammate. She returned with Taro in tow, who flailed his limbs frantically as he was dragged on the ground.

Masaaki threw his head back in laughter. Nenro sighed and shook his head. "You could've politely asked him to come with you," he said.

"I did."

"No, you didn't, you wild woman!" Taro raised his protest.

"I asked you once, but you started grumbling. I didn't want to waste time because I knew there would be no end to it. We only get ninety minutes of practice for this exercise. You left me no choice."

"No choice? No choiCE?! You—"

Takuma didn't need to listen more to decide he was siding with Ai. In the few weeks of working closely with Taro, and what he knew from the time before, Takuma knew there was no one more lazy than his ex-classmate. Taro was lazy incarnate. He didn't outright slack off and not complete the tasks assigned to him— only he tread the thin rope by merely doing the minimum amount to get by without pulling himself into trouble. And he was very good at it.

"Alright, both of you fight later," Takuma clapped his hand to get their attention to him. "I already told you about the sticky-hand climbing yesterday." The moment he returned from his successful climb, everyone crowded him about what he was doing. He had been polite and told the gist of his approach so as to not burn any bridges with the group because even though they were separated into teams, a lot of the time was spent together with the group. Afterward, he took his group aside to share some details.

No one had given the sticky-hand climbing approach a try, though, not even his teammates. He didn't blame them; he technically was with the least amount of progress.

"Today, I'm doing a simpler version of the tree-climbing practice," Takuma continued. "Like the pushup example," Ai furrowed her brows, "I'm doing what you guys are doing but on a less complicated surface, which is flat ground," he pointed down.

He had yet to climb the wall using the standard tree-walking style. Instead, after thinking about it for a day, he came up with another step to make progress more painless as possible.

"... By walking on the ground, you can take your time to apply the grip with chakra, eliminating the complexity that comes with a vertical surface," Taro, who was still on the ground, said while staring at Takuma's feet with his brows furrowed ever so slightly. "You don't have to worry about falling to the ground while you regulate the chakra between your soles as you take a step forward."

"Exactly!" Takuma pointed at Taro as that was precisely the crux of the simpler version. "I can do it slowly as gravity isn't hungry to pull me back down to the ground"— as the saying went, what goes up eventually comes down— "and I can take it as slow as I want while everyone else is trying to sprint up." He continued and pointed at his feet. "I'm trying to make every step stick to the ground without... this... happening!"

Takuma pushed the chakra to the sole of his front foot. The topsoil burst under his foot, and at the same time, he was thrown back onto the ground, unable to retain any semblance of balance.

He sat up with a groan. The feeling of being thrown back was annoying. "This exercise is perfect for getting a sense of how weight and force distributes between the two legs as you walk. If you can do it on the ground, you would have an infinitely easier time doing it on the steepest of walls."

"It makes sense," Taro nodded.

"Right?" Takuma smiled. "Start with both feet sticking to the ground, then release one foot and raise it up while adjusting chakra for the increased weight on the backfoot. Plant the forefoot on the ground, secure it with chakra, and only release the backfoot when you have affirmed the grip on the forefoot... and then repeat the process."

"Let's give this a try," said Ai. Nenro and Masaaki quickly agreed. All of them opted to do the 'ground-walking' without trying the hand climb like Takuma. Nenro even said that directly doing it with feet made more sense and involving hands seemed like an additional unnecessary step.

Takuma didn't agree, but he also didn't argue. Who was he to tell them how to do things? The hands exercise worked with him; who knows if it would work for everyone.

"Hey, where are you going?" Masaaki called when he noticed Taro walking away. Everyone looked to see Taro going back to his original spot.

"Back to the wall," Taro jutted his chin to the tall concrete structure.

"You're not doing Takuma's thing?"

"No, you guys go ahead; I'll stick to the normal method," Taro said.

"What the hell?" Masaaki frowned heavily, sounding upset and confused. "Didn't you say that Takuma made sense? Why're you not doing it then?"

Taro stopped and turned. He looked disinterested in the conversation with his lidded eyes and hands slipped into his pant pockets. "I did say it made sense, but never did I say it was correct...."

"Huh?"

"No one has tested Takuma's approach before. Hell, even he himself hasn't tested it before. He just came up with it after yesterday's session, who knows if it would work. The logic made sense, but a lot of things make sense on the surface, but not all of them actually work. I would rather try out an approach everyone knows works than try something whipped up by a rookie genin with less than a day's worth of thought."

Taro glanced at Takuma. "No offense, but given your past performance, we both know you aren't exactly reliable regarding this stuff."

"You! How can you say that?" Masaaki sounded upset but looked more confused. Even Nenro and Ai looked uncomfortable with the confrontation.

"Everyone, let's not fight," Nenro stepped forward, the mediator in any conflict in the team and group, "let's talk about it peacefully."

"He's right," Takuma suddenly said. The trio looked at him in surprise. "Everything Taro said is right. We don't know how well my progress on the ground would translate on the wall. Even if it does work, who can say it is worth it from a time standpoint. What if just grinding it out on the wall from start to finish is faster than my approach of gradually increasing difficulty."

It upset him. Taro's words about his reliability hit a place he didn't want to admit hurt. He might be on the same rank as every one of his peers in basic training, but his reputation remained the same. He was still Takuma, the genin who had failed two graduation attempts, the genin who despite being a graduate of the Konoha shinobi academy wasn't given a chance to test against a jonin, the same person who had lost all fights but one, the genin who had barely inched into genin rookie... he was still all of those things... none of them had disappeared.

Takuma clenched his fist until he was white knuckling and looked up at Taro. "Still, I will continue on with my approach," he said.

"You do you," Taro shrugged before walking away.

Takuma closed his eyes for a moment to calm his emotions down before opening them to look at his feet. He summoned the two energies in his body and melded them together to create chakra that flowed from his feet to the farthest part, the soles of his feet.

"Hey, Takuma..."

He looked up at Nenro and winced when the chakra that reached his feet didn't create a strong enough sticking grip and fizzled out.

"Yes," he sighed.

"... I think we're going through the normal route," Nenro said with pursed lips. His shining confident charm seemed to be dull in the moment as he matched eyes with Takuma.

Takuma nodded. Who was he to tell them how to do things.

Nenro walked away with Ai, who looked regretful as she followed her boyfriend. Masaaki looked conflicted as he looked between Takuma and Nenro and Ai; in the end, he walked after his academy friends with his head hung down as if he was guilty.

Takuma looked down at his feet and tried to mold chakra, but a hollowing feel stopped him. He knew what it was; he had felt it a lot in the past year. He was used to it. It shouldn't have bothered him. But who knew that after a few weeks in the company of a team with whom he spent most of his days, being all alone again would sting so much.

'Don't waste your time,' said a voice, 'remember you're trying to get stronger to survive— to thrive— you can't waste time worrying about others when you know how this world is and what's to come.'

He was right. Takuma had no time to waste. He had no special talents to rely upon or a clan to support him. He needed to do it on his own, and there was only one way to attain his goals— to work more than everyone else, and better than anyone else.

'—only you can guarantee your success—'

And thus, he molded his chakra.




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[The Radiance]

I am rooting for Takuma hard on this one.

 

[Zippogun]

Thanks for the chapters

 

[Fiction]

Yoshio stretched his legs as he got up from his outside chair and pocketed the scroll he was working on. Keeping the tree-walking practice at the end of every training session worked very well for him. He got one hour of free time that he used to complete work other than training the brats, which allowed him to call it a day immediately after the training ended.

As intended, he had already completed the day's work. For the last thirty minutes, he would observe his group to gauge their progress.

He weaved the hand seals for the Body Flicker Jutsu(Shunshin no Jutsu), and a moment later, he was on the other side of the wall, in a place a distance away from his genins, so they wouldn't notice him. Even if they had guessed when the training ended, thirty minutes was enough time to observe them in hiding to see if they were actually working or just pretending in the last few moments.

It was a real problem. Yoshio knew it was because he had done it when he was a genin(though he was in a jonin-lead three-man cell). His sensei had found out about it and whooped his ass into the ground— he saw no reason why his genin should be any different.

It was already the fourth day after his tree-climbing practice announcement. Yoshio expected that most, if not everyone, would be able to gain decent proficiency by the end of the third week, enough to scale up and down the wall. Though, he expected those more efficient with their chakra and those from shinobi clans to start making significant progress by the end of the first week— after that, it would take them three to five days to complete the exercise. Generally, clanless kids with shinobi parents followed soon after and would be done by the end of the second week with a day or two of leeway. The remains would then complete theirs all over in the third week.

'Let's see how much they have improved today,' Yoshio took out a small notebook upon which he had noted everyone's maximum height from yesterday. Tree-walking improved gradually but consistently until the moment the 'sense' for it kicked in, and then it was easy to improve it to a decent level.

His group was still in the gradual progress stage.

He checked the teams one by one, and as expected, they seemed to be following the norms. Clan kids were doing well, those with shinobi parentage seemed to be competing, and civilian-born seemed to follow along nicely at their own pace.

Yoshio arrived at the last team, Team-5. His eyes first went to the group leader, pretty boy Nenro. The kid had talent, even though he was a recruit from outside Konoha— and not from one of the major cities which had 'respectable' academies, but from a small-town academy— Nenro was competing with some of the clan kids. His skill set was balanced and refined, which meant he would have many choices in the future. Yoshio liked him. He worked hard enough, knew how to communicate with others, and was well-liked— if the cards were played right, he could see a potential chunin in the making. The chunin position traditionally valued leadership more than anything else and the boy's natural charisma would do wonders for him in that regard.

After noting down the progress, Yoshio moved on to Ai, the girl from the same town as Nenro. If he was being honest, she had a lot of things she could improve upon. Ai could perform the general rookie genin skillset learned in the academy as well as anyone else, but they could be raised to another level if she polished her basics. He decided to push her more during the drills and force her to improve. Surprisingly, Ai was higher on the wall than even Nenro. Her chakra control seemed to be great— girls tended to be better at chakra control— but she was doing phenomenally. Yoshio noted the observation for his end of basic training report that he needed to formulate for the counselor. He looked forward to seeing if she would be one of the first to complete the challenge.

It was then time for the third brat from the same academy. Yoshio took pride in his responsibility as an instructor, and he had broken down many genin to be made better in his career. But Masaaki was one of those tough cookies who was either super mental strength or dense as a brick because the boy didn't break down even a little bit. Yoshio had tried to make the boy be a little more serious or at least put on a serious front, but the boy was as outwardly jovial as he was when he arrived. At the same time, he liked the people of Masaaki's type— they were simple and straightforward and turned out to be generally nice people, and he enjoyed working with nice people. Plus, the boy could hit hard— no one in his group hit as hard as Masaaki— the boy would've gone far if he was born Akimichi.

The next one gave Yoshio some headaches. Through his career, he had learned that it was the lazy yet intelligent ones that did well. If they were the right type of laziness, they would take action and choose choices that would make their time easier. And they were the types who ended up in important leadership positions. But basic training was his domain, Yoshio didn't care for laziness, be it the wrong or right type— he wanted everyone to be working themselves to the bone so that he could say they had done all they could have. But the damned brat did just enough to avoid his baton. Yoshio saw a potential he could beat out, but he was held back because the brat was being tricky.

'I will get him,' Yoshio thought. There were plans for the future that would force Taro to act with more initiative.

'Now, how's the weird kid doing today?' Yoshio's eyes went to the final member of the team.

Yoshio didn't care what method anyone used as long as they got the job done, so he ignored Takuma's unorthodox approach and even looked upon it with interest. But it had been two days since Takuma had done anything but take strolls in the field. Yoshio wasn't a fool and saw what Takuma was trying to do from the blown-up spots littered around where Takuma practiced. However, Takuma had not shown any real progress, which was worrying.

Every day in basic training was precious. There was a lot to learn, but not enough time to beat it in. The genin already had five years of training; the state couldn't hold them in training anymore. The more time Takuma spent showing nothing on the wall, the less time he would've to catch up with everyone else.

'I should talk to him today... or should I give him one more day,' Yoshio was thinking when he saw Takuma walk towards the wall. Was Takuma going to try climbing the wall?

Takuma walked to the wall and touched it for a few seconds before moving a few steps away from it.

He's going to run, Yoshio could tell.

And that Takuma did. He ran to the wall and placed one foot on the wall, then the second. He leaned forward as he pushed his feet against the wall, and the first step quickly followed, then second, third, and fourth— before he suddenly pivoted his entire body to face sideways and came to a skidding stop.

But Takuma didn't fall. He stood perfectly perpendicular to the wall with his feet firmly planted on the vertical surface.

Yoshio moved closer. None of his other genin had been able to stop themselves on the wall. They would hurriedly climb until they could no longer.... No, he was wrong. Takuma had been able to stay on the wall, only it was with his hands.

The other twenty-four pairs of genin eyes were now also staring at Takuma. Yoshi could sense their thoughts right now. The weird kid had been able to do something none of them could yet do.

'Well done,' Yoshio thought. Takuma had shown progress, substantial progress, and that was enough. Yoshio was about to mark Takuma's progress when he twisted his feet face upward along with his entire body.

It couldn't have been more clear what he wanted to do, but before Yoshio could even look up from his little notebook to complete the thought, Takuma had taken off.

He ran. One step at a time, Takuma ran up the wall with cheers following up from the ground. The entire wall was empty, sans the one person who continued to scale the wall without hands.

One meter... two... three... five... ten...!

Takuma had already crossed three-quarters of the distance when his feet skidded. The grip from the chakra disappeared in an instant, and Takuma lost balance.

'So close,' Yoshio narrowed his eyes. For a moment, he thought Takuma would make it all the way to the top in one run, but it seemed that he was wishing for too much. However, this was enough, more than enough. Takuma's performance would set a fire under his and even other groups and make them play catchup.

With lost grip, the fall started, and Takuma began to plummet. But out of nowhere, Takuma slapped his gloved hands on the wall as he slid down. The next moment, the sole below the toes of his shinobi boots were skidding against the wall.

It was like someone decreased the playback speed on Takuma as his fall slowed down until he was mid-way through the wall with the tip of his fingers and the toes of his feet tethering him to the surface. Takuma shifted his feet until the soles of his feet were wholly pressed against the surface. He then slowly released his hand from the surface and straightened him, for a moment, he flailed around, eliciting gasps from the audience, but Takuma steadied himself and was again standing on the wall.

He shifted his head to glance down at the ground for a moment before looking back up. One step... second... third... fourth... fifth... Soon Takuma was already past his highest point, and then beyond.

On the top of the wall, two hands with frayed gloves grabbed the edge before Takuma pulled himself up and sat down on the top with his shoulders gently heaving. He looked down at all the people who were looking up at him. For a moment, he stared at them. Then he stood up, his eyes still on them. He raised one hand and began beating his chest as he let out the loudest yell that reached the bottom without getting any quieter.

With his notebook and pen in still hands, Yoshio looked atop the wall with surprise in his eyes. The climb was in no way perfect. Takuma had slipped once, and even with the miraculous recovery, it was still considered a broken run. Not to mention, coming down from the wall with tree-walking was the harder part.

Clap. Clap. Clap. But Yoshio had to give it to the boy. In four days, the kid had scaled up the wall. Faster than even the one-week - ten-day estimate he had set for clan kids. It went against his image, but he clapped. The kid deserved it.

Taking his lead, the entire group began to clap for the solitary person standing above them as they looked up at him.





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[Fiction]

As the winter warmed, biting winds turned into cool breezes, which Taro appreciated greatly. If he was to struggle under the sun all day long, then it would very well be with gentle currents keeping him nice and fresh, something that was difficult to maintain with most of his time spent in the gruesome basic training inflicted upon him by the musclebound gorilla of an instructor, Chunin Yoshio.

He wanted to sit, if not lay down on the grass and enjoy the pleasant weather, but the fear of Yoshio's beating kept him standing— the madman broke bones first and thought about it later.

But he had come to appreciate the time spent staring at the large wall as his groupmates tried to run up the wall using only their legs and chakra to scale the wall to complete the tree-walking practice challenge set by Yoshio.

He would prefer if he had a book in hand to read because watching them put in so much effort and struggle to make it just a few steps higher on the wall than before was honestly exhausting. Alas, reading time outside was limited to when he was patrolling the beat or during lunchtime if he was luckily left alone.

However, things had changed on the wall. Back at the start, every person in Yoshio's group would be boosting up the wall, falling down, and then trying again. Repeating the process until the time was over, and they could return to their sweet homes. But for the last few days, the wall had turned empty.

He looked at the ground between him and the wall and a dozen people awkwardly walking around, pulling up grass and bursting the ground with their insufficient chakra control. Every step was slow as they took time to apply the chakra grip and then detach it before taking the next step and repeating the process over and over in hopes that it would allow them to scale the wall better and faster.

'Idiots,' he thought.

Hadn't they seen how Takuma had done it while practicing on the ground? His awkwardness had lasted less than fifteen minutes before reassuming a natural gait. It wasn't that Takuma had learned something they hadn't— he still blew up the ground under his feet plenty of times on the first day. Takuma's 'easier' ground exercise was to eliminate the vertical complexity̦— and made them understand the natural motion of the foot when someone walked.

In the backfoot, the heel rose first, putting the weight and pressure on the front half, making it so that the chakra going to the entirety of the sole's surface needed to be redirected to only the tenketsu present in the ball and toes to counteract the shift in surface area. The same action happened in the forefoot but the opposite— the grip needed to be established the moment the heel made contact before the chakra was evenly distributed to the entire sole when the whole foot was planted on the surface.

By not walking naturally, they were wasting most of the benefits derived from the exercise. Taro silently shook his head. Making all that effort only to waste it because they weren't putting it in a proper manner.

He glanced at his teammates. At least there was someone who wasn't wasting their efforts altogether. Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki clearly had some additional pointers from Takuma as they walked naturally when walking on the ground. Smart of Takuma to leave the finer detail to only his team and let the others struggle their way to the realization— it paid off as Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki had already moved onto the wall and were scaling up to good heights.

Takuma's ground-walking exercise had swept over the group like wildfire after he had successfully scaled the wall in four days, faster than anyone— much, much faster. So much so that it was already the sixth day, and no one else had made it atop the wall. That had swayed more than half of the group to follow in his footsteps. He glanced up at the wall; some still followed the traditional method, those who had a shinobi background in their family or clan like him.

Maybe the other guys didn't want to admit that Takuma, the dead last orphan from the academy, could be better than him. Or perhaps they simply were getting the hang of tree-walking through the traditional approach and didn't want to go the other route.

'Or maybe their mom forces them to practice tree-walking at home after they're run ragged from a long day of harsh training,' Taro thought. The time dedicated to tree-climbing practice in the training regiment was his time to rest. After making sure Yoshio was actually not keeping an eye on them, Taro had found that as long as he practiced in the last half hour, Yoshio wouldn't break his legs. His mom made him practice tree-walking for an hour at home, so he worked the same ninety minutes as everyone else— and he really didn't want to work more than that.

In his opinion, it was a win-win for everyone.

A rackety scream followed by a loud "FUCK!" sent birds in the trees flying away with their flapping wings echoing in the field. Taro's eyes twitched— it had happened a couple times a day, but he hadn't gotten used to it.

Everyone looked at the wall, or to be precise, tried to imagine the scene behind the wall. The front side of the wall was for climbing up, but only those who had scaled up to the top could go on the other side to practice coming down. And out of twenty-five members of Yoshio's group, only one had reached the top and thus practiced scaling down on the other side.

Takuma cursed when he was frustrated; he had done so since they were in the academy and had gotten in trouble for it. Taro had heard Takuma curse more than speak when they were in the academy, but that was because Takuma pretty much never talked to anyone when they were in the academy. Even now, Takuma mostly spoke when he was spoken to.

There was another loud scream, and Taro's eyes automatically moved to the left of the wall. After half a minute, Takuma came into view with his hand holding his opposite shoulder as he limped to the Iryo-nin sitting in the distance under a carousel umbrella. Yoshio didn't appreciate cursing while in the presence of a superior-ranked shinobi, and the madman had no qualms about hurting the offenders to get his point across. Takuma was a fool to not understand after having a kunai slice his ear the first time around.

"Oooh!"

Taro turned his attention away from Takuma to the wall and found himself looking at Ai running up the wall. She rose up, and in a couple seconds, Ai was in the lead, leaving everyone else on the wall was left behind. Ai didn't stop and seemingly had gotten the key to chakra control as she only stopped when she reached the top of the wall.

The second person in the group to reach the top wasn't from a shinobi clan, he wasn't even from the Leaf village. That was going to sting many people. Taro glanced at the 'proud' members of Leaf's shinobi clan.

'Good for them,' Taro was happy for his teammate's success.

And he was happy with the breeze on his face.


———
.


"Taro, you need to practice more."

Apparently, others weren't happy with his happiness, which wasn't surprising to him as other people seemed to think to make his business their business and poke their noses where he didn't ask them to. It was quite annoying if he was being honest.

Taro gazed at his teammates standing in front of him. Usually, they would practice at the wall, but today they seemed to have gained an unwanted interest in him.

"May I ask why?" he said. "I'm doing well enough." He wasn't last in the group because Yoshio punished the people lacking behind, so he had kept himself in the middle of the pack, where it was safe.

"Because you're going to make us lose," said Takuma standing a step behind others with his arms crossed.

It was the first time since Taro had turned away Takuma's approach that he said a word to him. Takuma had clearly taken some offense to that. They were still civil, but just not on talking terms.

"What he means to say is that we want our team to be the first to complete the challenge," Nenro interjected and said with a disarming smile. Taro had to say Okubo Momoe had nothing on Nenro when it came to popularity; his teammate was disgustingly popular among their rookie batch. Mister Sunshine seemingly could get along with anyone thrown at him.

"Is it really important for us to come first?" Taro sighed.

"It absolutely is," Ai said. "I want to win the prize."

'Ah,' Taro forgot Ai's obsession with coming on top of the weekly leaderboard. They had to do it. But it seemed she was more interested in the prize than coming first.

''Well, to be honest, I'm not interested in coming first," he shrugged.

"Eh, why?!" Masaaki sounded confused. "If we win, we get mission points. We can buy jutsu from that, you know. How cool it would be to learn cool jutsu! So, come on, let's come first— we can even brag about it. It'll be fun."

'Too bright,' Taro sighed. It was like Masaaki had an IV drip of sugar solution attached to him, keeping him hyper every second of the day.

"Na, I'm fine," he said.

Mission points were the internal currency prevalent in the Leaf shinobi organization. They had many uses and could purchase everything from everyday groceries to vacation packages. But one of the most pervasive uses was to access jutsu from the official jutsu archives maintained by the state. With enough mission points, any shinobi could purchase a jutsu scroll and increase their military strength. It was the primary way for shinobi to gain access to the jutsu of their choice— and similar systems existed in the other four major shinobi organizations.

However, Taro wasn't in dire need of mission points. It was true that he was a rookie genin who needed to learn more practical jutsu to use them on the field, and mission points would be vital for him to not only keep himself safe but also grow as a shinobi... would be... but for him, he didn't need to slog for hours to get few measly points.

After all, he could just ask his—

"Oh, you pathetic piece of shit!" said Takuma, his brows hooked and mouth pursed in anger.

"Takuma, that was rude!" Ai was shocked as she scolded Takuma.

"No, that was warranted." Takuma pointed at Taro, "He's a spoiled piece of shit who doesn't want to work to gain things. He doesn't care about coming first in the weekly leaderboards or winning the challenge because it doesn't matter to him! Does it, Taro? Tell me I'm wrong."

Taro narrowed his eyes. He didn't appreciate the tone Takuma had taken with him.

"What?" said Nenro.

Takuma snorted, a strange expression on the usually calm and silent guy. "He doesn't care for mission points because they don't matter to him. He doesn't need to work for them because his parents are shinobi who can use their mission points to buy any jutsu scroll he wants. He told me his mom is a chunin, and what's a simple D-rank jutsu to a chunin, she could probably dump any amount for her pathetic son."

That was an exaggeration, and what was the repeated use of pathetic to describe him?

"Takuma, calm down," Nenro placed his hand on Takuma's shoulder.

Takuma shrugged it off and grabbed Taro's collar to pull him up. "Not all of us are as coddled and sheltered as you are, who can beg mommy and daddy to get them new toys whenever they want. Some of us have to work for our own shit and not be a mass of utterly useless with no redeeming quality. You're the laziest motherf—"

Before Takuma could continue, Nenro and Masaaki pulled him away from Taro and made him stop talking.

"Alright, alright, I'm stopping," Takuma pushed them off and walked a few steps away from them.

"Hey, Taro, come on, let's try," Ai said, her usually upbeat tone mellowed down with a pleading in her eyes.

Ai was cute, and for a moment, Taro contemplated agreeing. The charm of girls was dangerous, Taro thought. Instead, he said, "Takuma's right. I don't need the mission points," at least not for a while, "everyone from shinobi clans or those who have shinobi parents get help, and so will I. There's no need for me or anyone else like me to win the challenge or come first in the weekly rankings."

Takuma, who was facing away, turned to face Taro. "You know, I thought you were a smart guy. I once told you that," he said, shaking his head. "But it seems I had judged wrong. You're the most idiotic person I know. Kids with shinobi parents don't have to come first? Yeah, sure, that might be true, and they might not care about coming first or winning," Takuma pointed at the wall, "but at least they're fucking trying out there, trying to get better and improve themselves. You, on the other hand, are not only wasting your time but also screwing us along." Takuma scoffed, "Why stay in the Genin Corps, you said that to me. That if you have to be a genin, there are many other options. You had said that so nonchalantly. But you know what I think? You're going to be a career genin because no one will take a useless, lazy piece of shit like you because you're a mommy's boy who can't do anything by themselves. Who would like to hire someone like you? Go screw yourself."

Saying that, Takuma walked away in a huff. Masaaki threw Taro a look before running after Takuma.

"I don't want to agree with what Takuma said, but as you're acting now, I can't help but agree with him," said Nenro before walking away with Ai.

Taro watched them before sighing. He had simply told the truth. People with shinobi children had a clear advantage against civilian-born shinobi. There was a reason why so many Jonin came from shinobi clans— they had the resources and connections that allowed them to allow talented members to rise to the top.

'—You're the most idiotic person I know—'

He disagreed with that. Instead, he was being smart. He was doing what was expected of him, nothing more, nothing less.

'—You're going to be a career genin because no one will take a useless, lazy piece of shit like you because you're a mommy's boy who can't do anything by themselves. Who will like to hire someone like you?—'

Taro flicked his neck. He was an efficient person. Doing above and beyond what was mandated wasn't slacking off. He did not desire to be the best at anything because that would only attract more work. He preferred the middle because it was the coziest and most hassle-free.

'—but as you're acting now, I can't help but agree with him—'

Taro's eyes twitched as he recalled how Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki had looked at him. He covered his face with his hands and groaned.

"Shit..."

He dropped his hand to his waist and hung his head with squinted eyes.

"Shit."

He had to do it now, didn't he? He couldn't take being insulted by the dead last to his face. What would people say if they heard it? They would come to him and laugh and bother him. That sounded totally annoying. What if he scaled the wall before them— then they wouldn't be able to say anything because they were below the guy who got insulted by the dead last.

'Yeah, let's go with that,' he thought.

And with that, Taro took a step towards the wall.




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[The Radiance]

Well, insults are a kind of motivation yes? Even more so if they are deserved.

 

[Fiction]

"Come on, you lazy bastard, you can do it!"

Takuma yelled at the top of his lungs with his hands framing his mouth as he looked up at the wall with three people on the other side of the concrete wall. Standing alongside with him were Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki, along with another three genin from another team standing in the distance, yelling to the two genin on the wall beside Taro. There were more genin who observed, but none of them were vocal in their support.

Taro, on the wall, clicked his tongue at the sound of Takuma's voice. He glanced at his competition, both in different lanes than him— one was standing a few steps below him, while the other was barely a foot above him. He clenched his jaw, looked directly at the ground, and took a step forward that turned into a couple of quick steps until he was at the same height as the guy previously in front of him. He stepped on the brakes and used both his legs to grip the wall to stop the gravity from pulling him to the ground.

The front foot's grip proved insufficient, and it slid a few inches. His team on the ground gasped. Only the solid grip on the back foot kept Taro on the wall as he hurriedly fixed the grip and stopped himself from plummeting to the ground. Taro bent his knees, placing his hands on the wall, and tucked his head down as his shoulders rose and fell.

"Sir, that counts as a disqualification!" said Cho, a teammate of the two guys competing against Taro, to Yoshio sitting behind the crowd on his foldable chair.

"Bullshit! He's still on the wall. Are you blind?" Ai said viciously and glared at Cho threateningly.

Yoshio looked up from his newspaper to eye Ai. "I don't appreciate the crass language in front of me, Ai. Drop down and give me forty immediately, you filthy maggot," he said.

Ai growled in frustration as she got down to do her pushups. Cho looked ecstatic with glee and stuck her tongue at Ai.

Yoshio glanced up at the wall. "Taro's still on the wall; his run continues," he said to Cho's chagrin.

On the wall, Taro's competition both moved forward, immediately pushing him into third place and crossing three-quarters way down from the top.

"He's not going to make it," Masaaki bit on his thumb's nail as he stared intently at Taro. "He always falls after crossing the halfway mark."

"I believe in him," Nenro said, one hand clutching his blonde hair.

Takuma breathed out. He felt jumpy watching Taro competing on the wall. It was day nine of the tree-climbing challenge, and half the people had already made it to the top of the wall. Out of them, he, Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki had already completed the climbing down part of the challenge, leaving only Taro behind them— putting them on top as the favorites to win the tree-walking practice challenge.

But they had competition. Another team had three members who had completed the challenge and had two members attempting to successfully climb down without falling down. Making it Taro versus two others for the mission point prize.

Takuma wished he was in Taro's position. He would rather it be him in the clutch to bring the prize home than pin hopes on someone else, even if it meant he had to shoulder the blame if he failed. Unfortunately, somehow his dead-last status had betrayed him the one time he actually needed it, and now he had to watch Taro struggle on the last stretch. He could tell that today was going to be the deciding day as compared to yesterday the three had cut down their failure rate by huge margins. They were still falling but much further into their walk down.

'Why couldn't I have been dumped into a Yamanaka?' Takuma lamented. It would've been so much easier if he could've just taken control of Taro's body and won the challenge.

'You wouldn't have been able to cast the needed jutsu, you dumbass,' his voice mocking him in his head. Takuma sighed. Indeed, that would've been the scenario.

Taro got up from his crouching position and started walking, taking heavy thumping steps, moving closer to the ground. He passed the other two but didn't stop moving or even slow down and kept walking.

"Don't fall!" Takuma yelled.

A vein twitched on Taro's forehead. "You don't think I know that?!" he yelled.

"Shut up!" Ai yelled at Takuma.

Masaaki's nail biting got aggressive.

Nenro's other hand was now clutching his neck.

Taro made the bold move and started running, which was infinitely more complex. Takuma screamed inside his mind, which continued until Taro reached the bottom, stopped near the very bottom, and then smoothly stepped on the grass.

Takuma raised his hand, yelled in celebration, and jumped on Taro, with Masaaki and Ai joining the pile.

"Getuf me!" Taro waved his arms and legs on the bottom of the pile as Takuma and others laughed atop of him. After they untangled, Taro turned to Takuma and said, "I'm going to get out of Genin Corps before you. Mark that."

A comeback response formed in his mind, but Takuma chose to simply smile. He was just thrilled at the moment. The team had grabbed the number one position, which meant he was going to get his first mission points as the reward.

Yoshio relieved the flimsy-looking chair from bearing his large frame and got up. "That marks the end of the tree-walking practice challenge," he said. "I can't believe that the team with the two-time failure got first place. I fear for the future of Leaf shinobi."

Takuma didn't mind. He had gotten used to Yoshio's verbal abuse. It would feel strange if he didn't hear Yoshio berate in some way at least once every day.

Yoshio ordered them to gather up front, where he addressed everyone in his group.

"You all have been part of basic training for nearly a month now and have shown varying levels of improvement, disappointing mostly, but improvements nevertheless, and I'm sure a lot of you're feeling good about yourself," Yoshio said as he walked between the five-by-five grid of at-attention genin standing in perfect posture.

Takuma was indeed feeling good about himself. So much so that he was going to buy some of that expensive meat he saw at the butcher to make himself a scrumptious meal tonight.

"If you think you have figured it out, think again because what we were doing till now was what my grandma can do, and she's been dead twenty years," Yoshio yelled at them. "From tomorrow, we're going to do some real shinobi training, so enjoy today because you're not going to do it tomorrow."

Takuma would've rolled his eyes after hearing such threats day after day, but when the person who said it held no hesitation to beat the crap out of them for practically any offense, Takuma just couldn't ignore the threat as nothing.

"As the final tournament is a month away, and I want to win so that I can rub it in my friend's face, from tomorrow, the restrictions on sparring will be lifted," said Yoshio. Takuma moved his eyes to see if others knew what Yoshio was talking about. "From tomorrow, usage of ninjutsu and genjutsu is permitted. Weapons of your choice are now allowed. Smoke bombs and explosive tags are fair game. Anything that you think you can use to kill your opponent, bring it from tomorrow because I'm going to allow it to be used."

Yoshio's words echoed in Takuma's ears. Their spars had been restricted to taijutsu and the standard shinobi weapons like they had been in the academy. Even in his spars against Maruboshi, the rules had been the same. An unrestricted spar was unknown territory for him.

"Every spar you're going to be part of from here on out will be unrestricted, as that's what real life is like. The spars are going to teach you how to incorporate other skills into your fighting skill which I suppose for many of you is nothing but taijutsu."

Takuma raised his hand. "Sir, what if we don't know any ninjutsu other than the academy three?" he asked.

Yoshio's hearty laughter sounded sinister to Takuma. "Then you better use those mission points to buy some jutsu because I'm sure many of your friends here already have jutsu in their arsenal, prepared to be used." Yoshio came by Takuma and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. "And I'm going to make you spar with each other every day. They're going to use those jutsu on you every chance they get, and while I'll make sure you don't die, there's only so much I can do about the pain... I'm sure you understand, right, Takuma?"

Takuma stood rigid as Yoshio's hand left his body, but he could still feel it weighing down on his shoulder. He glanced around the grid and saw the others looking at him; some had a hint of smiles on their faces. Cho had an especially nasty grin on her face.

He wasn't looking forward to tomorrow.


———
.


"What're you going to buy?" Masaaki asked as they walked home together after training ended. Nenro and Ai had taken off together, and Takuma's place was in the opposite direction. "Are you going to buy a jutsu?"

"It doesn't make sense to save the mission points in this situation," said Takuma. "We can only get mission points if we rank number one in the weekly leaderboard, and spars are a big part of it. With ninjutsu included, competition is going to get tough; if we don't learn jutsu of our own, we're definitely going to be left behind." He was no Rock Lee who could make a career out of taijutsu— he needed supernatural weapons of destruction to help him. "And I really don't want to get thrashed in every spar... believe me, I tried that, I'm over it— not fun at all."

Plus, he was sure these new spars would hurt a lot.

In their group, not a single group had ranked number one multiple times. And while their group hadn't placed number one, they had been number two twice because of Nenro and Masaaki's sparring and because they were never messed up in the drills. With the unrestricted spars, their positioning was yet again at risk.

"I have no idea what I'm going to get," Takuma said. He didn't even know what jutsu was there in the library and if there were any good ones he could buy with his mission points. He just hoped there was some variety. "What about you?" he asked.

Masaaki shrugged. "I'll talk with Nenro and Ai... Do you want to come with us tomorrow?"

Takuma shook his head. He was going to consult with Maruboshi, the wisest person he knew, about which jutsu he should choose. It was an important choice because, with his track record, it could take anywhere from one day to two months to learn this jutsu, and if he was going to get his ass kicked into the dirt while he worked hard to learn this jutsu— so it better be good and worth the pain and effort.

Even though he could see the hard days in front of him, he couldn't help but feel excited about learning a new jutsu. This was going to be his first 'practical' jutsu— a significant addition to his toolbox that would define his combat style.

Takuma said goodbye to Masaaki before heading toward Maruboshi's home to visit his teacher, whom he hadn't seen in a month since he had started basic training.




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[Fiction]

Takuma rested his temple on his palm as he flipped through the thick pages of an old binder in front of him, reading the small font that populated the page.

He knew choosing a jutsu would be difficult, but spending three hours flipping through D-rank jutsu catalogs in the jutsu archives for the last four days hadn't been part of his plan. Ninjutsu divided into five elemental categories, the various jutsu that didn't fit in the elemental categories, and genjutsu— there were so many choices to pick from. While not unlimited, there were double-digit jutsu in each elemental release, the same with genjutsu and the miscellaneous category.

The freedom of choice was paralyzing.

Only if the timing had been different. His initial plan of relying on Maruboshi's rich shinobi experience had fallen on its head when he went to Maruboshi's house only to be told by the neighbor that Maruboshi had left for a mission last week and wasn't scheduled to return for the next couple weeks.

Takuma groaned. If only the mission points had arrived a week earlier, he wouldn't be having this problem. 'I should've prepared for my first jutsu the moment I knew about mission points,' but Takuma didn't have that foresight.

He pushed the binder away and pulled in the pocket notepad to add another jutsu to his shortlist list. Not all D-rank jutsu priced similarly, and with the mission points he had, he could only get those within his price range. Seeing the more expensive D-rank jutsu made him want to hold back on the purchase and maybe try to get more before buying one, but knowing that wasn't a choice, he was grateful that his poverty had restricted his choices— if not, he would be visiting the archives for weeks trying to pick one out.

He flipped through the tiny pages, each featuring a jutsu that interested him. Earth Release, Water Release, ninjutsu that fell under the bukijutsu category, genjutsu, and many others that served defensive or offensive purposes.

Takuma stared at the list for who knew how long before he got up and placed the catalog binders in their place on the shelves. The jutsu archives were separated by grades E- and D-rank jutsu were placed in the same library, while C- and B-rank were stored in other locations. He was curious to know if there was even an A-rank library, as those jutsu were considered in the same category as precious treasures. According to Taro, even jonin had difficulty raking up enough mission points to purchase A-rank jutsu.

That's why it grinded his gears to think there existed a clan that could just copy jutsu by seeing someone performing. He could understand why Orochimaru was so obsessed (read_as: horny) for Uchiha's Sharingan. Choosing his jutsu really put the Sharingan's cheat-like abilities into perspective.

'If I knew something like this would happen, I would've read the Rasengan training chapters until I was dreaming about them,' Takuma regretted not being a massive Naruto fan. If he knew how Rasengan worked, not only could he learn it without forking out mission points, he would have a powerful B-rank jutsu or whatever rank Rasengan was considered— if it was good enough for the protagonist and the Fourth Hokage, it was more than good enough for him.

He moved deeper into the archive until he arrived at the section in the back with a small counter. The counter was embedded into the wall and was made from heavy steel. Takuma looked at the shinobi standing behind the counter through the glass that was lined with a chain-link fence.

"I would like to exchange my mission point for a jutsu," Takuma said.

"... ID," said the shinobi after staring at Takuma for a few silent seconds.

Takuma slid his shinobi registration card through the semi-circular cutout in the glass where it met the steel counter. The shinobi took it and, without looking at it, passed it to someone behind the wall. He tried to lean his head to check but couldn't spot anyone. He assumed it had gone for verification of some kind.

The shinobi and Takuma stared at each other for the next two minutes. Takuma was sure the shinobi was playing the staring game with him because the man hadn't blinked once since the start.

When Takuma's ID returned, the shinobi said, "Which jutsu would you like to exchange for?"

"Raiton: Shokku," Takuma announced his choice.

As the name suggested, Raiton: Shokku (Lightning Release: Shock) was a lightning-type jutsu. It was a simple jutsu that sent out a lightning bolt that caused light shock damage and stunned them for a moment. It was a Pokemon move if Takuma had seen one. But that wasn't the reason he had chosen it. Of course not. The jutsu had a simple enough usage that it could be used in a variety of situations, whereas there were jutsu that would only work when certain conditions were met.

Like the immortal guy in Akatsuki (whose name Takuma couldn't recall even if his life depended upon it) used the strange jutsu that required the target's blood. It was super powerful, but it wouldn't work in the absence of a blood sample.

Takuma preferred if his jutsu had a simple use case that he could spin it in any situation. Thus his choice. Shooting a lightning bolt was as simple as it could get.

There was another stare down as the shinobi behind the counter handed a slip of paper to the person who Takuma couldn't see. This time Takuma didn't try to blink, but he lost midway through. His opponent was too formidable and stoic.

"Check your details and sign the form if you consent for the mission points in your account to be deducted in exchange for receiving Raiton: Shokku," said the man, pushing a form and pen from the hole in the glass. "Please know that the transaction will be finalized once you sign this form. You can't return the jutsu scroll afterward with the excuse that you'd like to exchange it with another one."

"I understand," Takuma gave his verbal confirmation and checked the form before signing it.

The shinobi checked the form before finally pushing a light lime green scroll through the hole. Takuma checked the scroll name and registration number unique to Raiton: Shokku as he was instructed on the first day he came to the archives.

"Thank you," Takuma said as he stared at the scroll in hand.

Was his choice correct? He honestly didn't know. Only time would tell if he would come to regret his decision.


———
.


"Congratulations, Team-5, you were number one last week on the leaderboard," said Yoshio first thing on Monday morning.

"Oh, come on!" Takuma all but yelled at the announcement.

Yoshio's eyes sharpened as he glared at Takuma. "Do you have any problem with my decision, Takuma? I can revert my decision and give the points to another team," he said, raising his steel baton.

"Sir, no, sir!" Takuma said loudly as he felt Ai pinch and twist a point in his back. The girl was a glutton for mission points.

"That's what I thought," Yoshio said. Then told Takuma to do thirty pushups with Ai sitting on his back.

After the pushups, the group went for their daily run around the large running grounds. There Ai elbowed him in the side and hissed, "Are you mad? What would you've done if he took back our points?!"

"Sorry, I already said I'm sorry," he said. "I just feel like an idiot."

"Huh, why?"

Takuma felt like crying. "I went to the jutsu archive yesterday and exchanged my points for one," he said. He would've waited one day if he knew they would be number one in the rankings. He would've had so many more choices if he had waited. "Why did we win so suddenly?!"

"Why're you complaining," Ai elbowed him again.

"The tree-walking practice challenge," Taro chimed in his flat voice. "The next team took two more days. I thought it was obvious we were going to win." Taro's two competitors in tree-walking practice weren't able to get down without falling for two more days.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" Takuma felt like not running anymore and just drop to the ground and go to sleep to escape the frustration he was feeling.

"I don't dream about that you wanted to know... stupid," said Taro.

The conversation ended there. Takuma knew that no one was going to talk about their jutsu. Secrecy and the element of surprise was a powerful tool. They were friends and training teammates, but they fought each other in sparring and everyone wanted to win; thus, keeping the secret gave them an advantage. Even if it only lasted only one fight before people started to strategize against the jutsu.


———
.


After the conditioning start of the day, Yoshio told them to gather around to start the first sparring sessions. Unlike the academy, there was no fighting circle. Yoshio calling the fight and submission was the only way to reach the end of the battle.

"Takuma and Kameko," Yoshio announced.

'Shit,' Takuma clicked his tongue as he got up from where his team sat and made his way to Yoshio. He glanced to the side and saw a girl with a bob cut dressed in a white and lavender skirt-kimono with a sword scabbard attached to her hip.

Taketori Kameko from the Taketori clan was the second one to complete the tree-walking practice challenge after him. She was in his academy classroom, and one of their class's better fighters. Given that she was in the Genin Corp, her jonin sensei had failed her. But from what Takuma had seen, she was definitely not Genin Corp material— she should've been in a jonin-led team.

"You know the rules. Get started," Yoshio said before walking away.

Takuma made the Seal of Confrontation, and he swore Kameko's usually cold and stoic eyes were glaring at him as she mirrored him.

'Shit.' He had noticed that look since the day he had completed the tree-walking practice challenge. It wasn't overt, but anytime their eyes met, Takuma knew she was bothered by him completing the challenge before her.

"Start." The moment Yoshio's word sounded, Takuma jumped back to make some distance between them because he knew that was the best decision from the spars he had seen since Yoshio's unrestricted combat announcements.

*Shing* Kameko put her hand on the sword hilt and unsheathed her katana. The sharp blade shimmered under the sun.

The "better" fighter in the academy had been a Taketori clan member who wasn't allowed to use a sword. Taketori literally meant bamboo cutter and was a shinobi clan specializing in their special swordplay that revolved around—

Kameko stepped forward, and suddenly Takuma felt cornered even as he jumped back as the girl in front of him erased distance faster than he could create.

'Shit!'

Takuma put his kunai in front of him as he saw the shorter girl breach his personal space, and before he could even put on his guard, she swung her sword at him.

*Riiip!*

— revolved around speed.




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[Zippogun]

Thanks for the chapters.

 

[The Radiance]

There is no way for Takuma to win that fight but here's hoping.
Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Daonexus]

Nah bro, Takuma is tripping.Yyu can't be a true naruto fan without knowing how to train the rasengan

 

[Fiction]

*Riiip!*

Takuma couldn't completely escape the sweeping sword. The tip of the blade edge sliced through the fabric of his vest, splitting the threads when it wanted to split the skin beneath it.

The ground under Takuma's feet exploded as he threw himself back faster than before with desperation as the scent of Kameko's forged steel blade lingered under his nose.

Kameko leaned back and eased her stance, choosing not to immediately pursue Takuma. Instead, her cat-like eyes followed him as he escaped beyond the reach of her blade.

Takuma put his hands on his chest, feeling his chainmail undervest through the tear in his vest with one hand while his other held the kunai in front. He looked down at his hand to see if the swing had drawn blood to find only sweat on his fingers. His ears picked up a sound, and he looked up to see the flash of Kameko's blade cover his vision.

He brought up the kunai, and sparks flew as metal met metal. Takuma took a step back to stabilize himself as he felt the weight of the heavier long blade pushing against his wrist. He looked up at Kameko and he was close enough to see the specks in her yellow eyes—

So he headbutted her in the face.

"Ugh," Kameko disengaged and fell back away from Takuma, who threw the kunai at her that she deflected with the sword. Takuma rushed forward and slashed at her with a kunai, aiming to end the fight early. Kameko shrugged off his first and second strikes with the edge of her blade and sent a jab to Takuma's stomach. He sidestepped as his kunai altered the stab's direction.

Takuma stepped in further, grabbed the wrist of Kameko's sword arm, and bent it. Kameko mirrored the move and they grappled, tripping and falling in the first. There was a scramble, a dropped sword, a gut punch, a curse, a retrieved sword, and a heavy kick, and then both were back up, circling.

Takuma didn't waste any time and rushed in to overwhelm her. A poor choice as a horizontal sweep almost cut Takuma's face off. He fell back and touched his nose to this time find blood on his fingertips. He eyed the blade that granted Kameko an extended range he lacked, and he decided to keep his distance.

Kameko had the opposite plan as she closed in the distance again, keeping her sword parallel to the ground and aimed at Takuma's chest. Takuma did his best footwork to avoid the sword. A slit appeared in his sleeve above his shoulder as he pulled back. Takuma hurled the kunai in his offhand in a shoddy throw and it flew a little above than intended.

Kameko shifted her head to let the kunai pass. For a moment, Takuma had breathing room as he escaped out of sword's range. But then Kameko swung her sword and Takuma saw red.

The sword passed by, missing him by an inch, and yet a spurt of blood gushed out from a long wound that suddenly split open on his chest in the same place where Kameko had ripped his vest. Even if he mistook the blade missing him, the light chainmail under his vest didn't do anything, and as Takuma fell down, he could see the clean continuous line slit from one side to the other.

Kameko eased her stance, and without sparing a glance to her blade, she deposited it into the sheath as she peered down at a trembling Takuma who was looking at his bloodied hands.

"Get up," Yoshio said as he arrived beside the pair.

Takuma writhing on the ground tensed his muscles for what seemed like an excruciatingly long moment before he forced himself to get up with his face twisted into an extreme grimace with sweat pouring out of his body at an alarming rate.

His vision blurred as he raised his bloodied hand to form the Seal of Reconciliation. Kameko had to adjust her part of the seal to grab his shaking hand.

Then without saying a word, Takuma started walking away from the group with no one other than Kameko tailing behind him. She didn't help him even as he struggled to take steps, swaying dangerously from side to side, almost falling down many times.

"Ooh, now that's a nasty one."

Takuma's destination was the shady guy shinobi who worked as the basic training's medic as his qualification as an Iryo-nin (Medical Shinobi).

Shady Guy got up from his foldable chair as Takuma collapsed on a stretcher under the medium-sized tent with three tents and a few boxes with supplies.

"You got lucky, huh girly, snipping him just in the right place to make him lose blood," said the Shady Guy as he pulled off Takuma's vest, chainmail shirt, and cotton undervest, causing him to scream in pain as it disturbed the wound sending a sharp screeching pain through his body.

"I don't get lucky," Kameko muttered with her sharp eyes narrowing.

Shady Guy chuckled as he checked Takuma's wound. He weaved hand seals for an iridescent green glow of Shosen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Jutsu) over his hands that he placed over Takuma's wound, and after some time, the blood stopped leaking out of the exposed internals. Shady Guy stopped his healing jutsu and then proceeded to clean up the wounds. He then cast another Shosen Jutsu to finally close Takuma's wound before dressing the semi-stable recently healed wound that could still catch infection or other complications. He then walked to one of the cold boxes and pulled out a glass vial with a dark brown opaque tint whose contents he made Takuma drink.

"There... all good again," Shady Guy slapped Takuma on one cheek to snap him out of his dizzy haze.

Takuma didn't feel all good in any form. He wasn't used to the feeling of getting an injury, only for it to be healed within the next twenty or so minutes. His head felt heavy and a shiver gripped his body as he got up from the stretcher to return back to his team as mandated by Yoshio. The feeling was horrible.

Every time someone was injured, they were sent to Shady Guy to get healed. If the injury was minor, like a shallow cut on the arm, people could return in a couple minutes as if they had never been injured. If the injuries were major, like a deep cut that hemorrhaged blood to the point of serious blood loss, they would end up like Takuma— there were worse cases as well.

No one was allowed to help the injured party drag themselves to the medical tent if they could do so themselves, even if barely. The person who had inflicted the injury would accompany the person in case they collapsed. Yoshio wanted them to get used to what he called functioning under damage. He wanted them to function unaided after they were gravely injured to secure themselves away from danger and survive until they were patched up— he then wanted them to operate to a competent degree right after getting healed so that they wouldn't become an absolute burden. Of course, Yoshio talked in idealistic terms, as overly serious injuries could outright disable the shinobi from any movement— but any ability to function under life-threatening harm was absolutely valuable in survival.

"I'm leaving," Kameko announced and walked away without waiting for a response.

Takuma didn't feel like replying to her and focused on trudging his way back to the group, where he dumped himself with his team, lying down on the ground with his arm over his forehead.

"You sure suck against fast people," Masaaki commented as he peered down at Takuma directly over his face.

"Shut... I know," Takuma mid-way abandoned his attempt to argue and just accepted the comment. It was true. Faster, quicker opponents were his bane based on his win-loss statistic— ironic, given that his win was against a nimble opponent. But unlike Aimi, his defeats came from opponents who could deal significant damage while being fast like Kameko. He just couldn't keep up with them with his taijutsu. An important factor that he included in his decision when choosing Raiton: Shokku (Lightning Release: Shock) as his first jutsu.

He turned his head towards Taro. "What was that?" he asked.

Taro, the person who knew most about essentially everything in the team, eyed Takuma briefly before drawling out the answer. "Taketori clan practices their special brand of swordplay, something that is classified as a high-ranking kenjutsu. And it's not as simple as swinging a sword in a certain way. There are actual jutsu combined with the swordplay that makes it a high-ranking bukijutsu," he shrugged. "She simply used a jutsu from her clan."

"She didn't weave any hand seals," Takuma mentioned his observation.

This time, it wasn't Taro who answered, but it was Masaaki who spoke up. "It's bukijutsu. Kenjutsu is a type of bukijutsu. A lot of it is based on top of a fuinjutsu base. Maybe there's something in her sword. If not, then there are a few instances that don't require hand seals at all. The Samurai that serve as Daimao's retainers use swordplay that doesn't require hand seals to activate— maybe it's something like that."

Takuma was surprised to hear an opinion from Masaaki. His jovial and goofy teammate was many things, but he was not a person who would express profound knowledge in conversations. His reputation was a strong guy who operated more on polished instinct than learned understanding. Takuma glanced at Nenro and Ai, and while they shrugged, they didn't seem surprised by Masaaki's sudden bout of knowledge. Takuma attributed that to childhood friends knowing much more about Masaaki than he could've learned in a mere month. It took years to truly know a person.

"It's their clan's jutsu, speculation is pointless without further evidence. We can just infer from what we know," Taro said in conclusion.

Takuma didn't know if he agreed with the first part, but he did concur with the second part of the statement. He now knew that Kameko could potentially slice her opponents even if the blade of her sword didn't reach him— essentially extending the reach of her blade. Was it a wind element jutsu? Or something elementless that simply created a cutting surface on top of the sword? Whatever it was, she could extend her range.

The important question that needed to be considered was the upper limit of the extension. Was it a couple inches, or could she seemingly double the length of her blade— maybe even more.

"That headbutt was funny!" Masaaki laughed merrily.

"Ugh, I felt that from here. My nose felt warm when you did that," Ai grimaced as she glanced toward Kameko's team. "She's lucky that you didn't break her nose."

"I tried to do just that," Takuma said with a frustrated sigh, "she ducked her head at the last moment." He had gotten his chest cut open; the least she could do was get her nosy bloody.

"I'm still surprised she used a jutsu against you," Taro said as he watched the ongoing spar.

"What do you mean?" Nenro asked.

"She good. He bad," Taro replied, not even bothering to form a complete sentence.

"I hope you're my next opponent. I'll show you who bad," Takuma commented as his head got clearer. He sat up on the ground and took a swig from his canteen before speaking: "She was probably pissed that I completed the tree-climbing practice challenge before her and took that out on me," he clicked his tongue.

Takuma took another swig from his canteen as he looked at the ongoing spar with his own spar replaying in his mind. His mind automatically went back to every split-second of the fight, and it was then he noticed the small crater hole in the ground, and after a couple seconds of staring, he recalled that he was the one who had made that.

'Hmm?'




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[CHOSEDEATH]

First!

 

[Black Zeku]

I got a feeling he's gonna use the failed tree walking exercise as a sorta flash step. Smart, the only question is can he apply it to his fighting style. Like every hit he lands he leaves a chakra shockwave.

 

[Zippogun]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[Fiction]

Takuma yawned wide enough to fit three fingers into his mouth as he poured over the unfurled scroll that flowed down both sides of his lap onto the grass of the training field, the same he had once used with Maruboshi.

Reading complicated theory written in a jutsu scroll at four in the morning wasn't an exciting prospect to shoo away the lingering haze of sleep. But it had to be done. He couldn't outspeed Kameko, nor could he face her head-on with taijutsu, especially not against her swordplay. Whatever remaining chance of dwindling victory was slashed down to nothing when chakra-backed bukijutsu got involved.

He needed ninjutsu to create an advantage for himself. A tool that would give him a chance at grabbing victory. And Raiton: Shokku (Lightning Release: Shock) was the tool of his choosing.

Every element on the chakra transformational wheel was versatile in its own right. Earth was the reliable rock of protection under the feet. Fire burned with destructive rage. Water flowed with an elegance that could, at any moment, bring about natural disasters. Air was the ever-present resource that could be commanded to shear through anything sharper than any forged blade ever could. Lightning similarly held power ranging from malignant thunder to trickling electricity, capable of vibrating and creating a cutting force that could pierce any object.

Takuma placed the scroll to the side and walked a sufficient distance away. The jutsu, as any other, required him to weave hand seals that would guide and transform the chakra to suit the jutsu's requirement. The output, in this case, was supposed to be a bolt of lightning coming out of the hand to shock the target with damage and a short spell of paralysis.

It was perfect for him. He could fire it from a range, allowing him to disengage from close combat to some extent, and when the target was struggling from the paralysis, he could then move in close to inflict some punishment. It covered his weakness in taijutsu and gave him an offensive boost.

Weaving hand seals, Takuma channeled his chakra and pointed his arm forward. A few sparks of bluish-white lightning arced around the length of his arm and gathered in front of his palm, condensing into a bolt that shot forward, but before it could fly even a few inches, the bolt fizzled away.

Takuma clicked his tongue and jerked his hand to shake away the smoke. The jutsu wasn't working for him. While it wasn't something he was unfamiliar with as Henge no Jutsu(Transformation Jutsu) and Kawarimi no Jutsu(Substitution Jutsu) came slowly to him.

However, Raiton: Shokku wasn't like them. He had picked the jutsu reasonably quickly. The tree-walking practice had granted him enough chakra control to learn D-rank jutsu— or at least, Raiton: Shokku.

'But not enough to do it properly,' Takuma sighed. While the jutsu activated successfully, the resulting electric bolt was nothing like it should be. The thin bolt barely traveled a couple feet, and while Takuma hadn't experienced it, from the looks of it, the bolt didn't seem capable enough to do any significant damage.

With each passing week, Yoshio would announce his weekly rankings, and one team would be crowned as number one. Team-5 had aced the rankings once, which had once made them contenders for the spot in the final tournament 'representing' Yoshio. But just last week, Kameko's team had gained their second number one position in the rankings, putting them on top. And Cho's team, who had lost out to his team in tree-climbing practice, were slated to win this week(according to Taro), which would also be their second time as number one.

Team-5 needed another number one on weekly rankings to remain a contender for the final tournament— they needed to do it quickly.

And for that, he needed to win more.


———
.


"Yuu and Takuma."

Okazaki Yuu grinned when he heard the other name being called out. He glanced at his opponent of the day as he strolled out to the middle of the field for the spar.

Takuma was always an opponent to fight. It meant a victory with a satisfying beatdown was in the bag. The same it had been ever since they were in the academy. Yuu had yet to lose a single fight to Takuma. Even the two times they had fought in basic training, he had swept the floor with Takuma.

Yuu smirked as he raised his hand to form the Seal of Confrontation that Takuma mimicked. Yuu didn't say anything. He waited until Yoshio turned back to walk away, and only when he got the signal to start, he spoke, knowing that everything was fair game within the confines of the spar and the sadistic piece of shit instructor won't find an excuse to swing his baton.

"Yo, Takuma. You look boring as always," said Yuu, his smirk widening. "We haven't fought much since we left the academy. I miss those days, we got to play a lot more than we do now. We had so much, neh?"

His uncle had always told him that provoking the opponents did wonders during fights. Mistakes and hasty decisions in anger were easy to exploit and deliver a solid thrashing. Mind was as important as the body during combat. Everyone in the family disagreed with his uncle. His father said that angering the opponent could make combat more aggressive and challenging to manage if not appropriately handled.

Yuu felt his uncle's words always made sense to him. Especially when he was able to get in solid hits at Hiji during their spars after provoking the Inuzuka with comments like he smelled like a dirty dog that made him sloppy. The Inuzuka clan was much stronger than the Okazaki clan; they had been there since the creation of the Leaf village— so it felt great when he got in hits at Hiji.

He also just liked the expression of anger that appeared on his opponents' faces. It was like they were telling him of their own volition that his tactics were working.

Not with Takuma thought, Yuu narrowed his eyes. Takuma had a stone flat expression on his face as he put some distance between them when Yoshio announced the start. It was always like that since Hiji, him, and their group would go play with Takuma to have some fun, Takuma never gave them any reaction no matter what they said.

It was unsatisfying to see that. But that just made the spars more entertaining because, during the fights, Takuma would struggle against them, and one could know more about the person through sparring than they could ever through simple facial expressions.

Yuu wasted no more time and lunged ahead to get in the first hit. Takuma tried to get out of the way, but Yuu's first initiative made him unable to dodge, so he raised his shoulder to absorb the kick. The contact sent Takuma spinning, stumbling a few back. Yuu saw the slight slack in Takuma's block arm and knew he had done damage, so he didn't relent and charged forward.

Takuma recovered his footwork and scurried away from Yuu, who came at him swinging. He blocked two thundering blows and was already staggering as Yuu continued to send in blow after another.

Yuu felt great. It was times like these that told him that Takuma was still the same dead last he had been in the academy. That the tree-climbing practice challenge was a fluke and that there was no way the dead last could be first in anything. Behind him, his friends gibbered and cheered in turns.

"He's done," one of them said.

"Burn him," another hooted.

Yuu was happy to oblige.

Takuma continued to be pushed back, unable to get in a single hit. He almost stubbornly kept his guard up, using his hands, arms, and legs to protect his torso or head from any of Yuu's attack. He seemed so desperate to stop the incoming attacks that he tried to unsuccessfully grab Yuu's punches and kicks.

Yuu whipped his dominant leg with all the power he could muster from his muscles, and he was sure he could see Takuma's body curve around the place on his arm where the kick made contact. A grin made its way to Yuu's face as he pulled his back, intending to get another kick from the same leg in quick succession.

But suddenly, he couldn't separate his leg from Takuma's arm for a moment, and when he pulled, Takuma got dragged along. Only for a moment, though, as the next second, his leg was back to the ground, and Takuma was swaying as he staggered on his steps.

What was that? Yuu thought. Did something on his shoe catch the fabric of Takuma's clothes?

"Fuck it," he heard a crude whisper.

Yuu couldn't think forward as Takuma sucked air into his lungs, bellowed, and ran for Yuu. The crowd cheered, and Yuu didn't move. He stood there and launched his foreleg into Takuma's chest with a front kick. Takuma folded like a book as he flew back.

*Poof!*

A thick cover of white smoke erupted in front of Yuu and obscured Takuma completely.

'What?' Yuu backed up and alarmingly looked at the smoke, his eyes darting left and right to see through the haze to locate Takuma.

Suddenly four Takumas emerged out of the smoke. They had jumped high and were coming down at him with kunai in their hands. As the smoke cleared up, six more Takuma ran out of the smoke, charging toward him.

Clones. Yuu's mind immediately identified the jutsu in front of him. How did you identify the real from the clones? Shadows! But did the clones in the air cast shadows? What if the real Takuma was among the ones in the air?

Before Yuu could do anything, one of the clones in the air came down with his foot facing his face. Yuu moved to the side to dodge, and his eyes moved to the ground— no shadow; it was a clone. He was about to lightly push the clone to release the jutsu when he heard footsteps.

Yuu immediately turned back and saw a Takuma cocking a punch toward him. He ducked and launched a punch on instinct that went through the clone. He looked around, and all Takuma were attacking him. He felt overwhelmed because he didn't know which one was the real one.

It was then that he felt a kick to the back of his head that rattled his teeth and sent him to the dirt. Before Yuu could react, he felt another kick to the side of his head that rolled him face-side up.

Yuu could no longer tell if the Takuma looking down at him were clones or if his blurry vision had multiplied many times over.

"Fuck you and that mutt," he heard Takuma say over the piercing ringing noise that had started after the second kick.

Takuma dropped to his knees and then started dropping 12-6 elbow strikes down onto Yuu's face, who had one hand pinned down under Takuma's knee while the other hand was fended off by Takuma's other hand.

Yuu couldn't even tell when everything went dark.


———
.


"Stop!"

Takuma forced himself to get another elbow strike down on Yuu's bloody and battered face and stepped away from his academy bully, feeling the aches in his body from all the hits he had taken—

'All for nothing,' Takuma clicked his tongue.

"Boy you didn't hold back, did you," Yoshio said as he squatted near the quivering Yuu, who suddenly stopped shaking and went still. "Ah, got knocked out— lucky for him, his friend will take him to get treated. Right, Takuma?"

Takuma knew the rules. The assaulter would go with the injured to the medical tent without helping them. But if the latter party was knocked out, then the assaulter would need to carry them to the tent. He slung Yuu over his shoulder and stomped his way to the medical tent.

"Oh my, even his mother couldn't bear to look at him. You did a number on him, boy," Shady Guy commented after Takuma dumped Yuu on the stretcher.

Takuma didn't reply or wait and walked back to his team and sat down with his team.

"Why're you sulking? You won, you know," said Ai.

"I had to use clones!" Takuma spat. "I wasted it, dammit!"

Bunshin no Jutsu(Clone Jutsu) was supposed to be a one-time surprise tactic. Overwhelming his opponent with ten or so clones who didn't know it would come as no one used Bunshin no Jutsu in fights wasn't going to work when his opponent knew that he could use that. Now that he had used it, everyone in the group knew to look out for his clone blitz.

A wasted one-time game changer— wasted.

And his experiment wasn't even successful.

Takuma wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at the ground. He needed to get better at Raiton: Shokku or find a different way to get stronger before the final tournament.




Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón [fictiononlyreader]. Link below.
Note: All the chapters will eventually be posted on public forums.

 

[Zippogun]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[The Radiance]

Yeah, he won't be able to use the same tactic on anyone. I don't think shock is meant to be used in fights tho rather than just training for more useful jutsus.

 

[Jiopaba]

It's really... weird, sometimes, reading this story. In an over-the-top world that's practically a cultivation setting where shit like "the ability to obliterate an entire village on a minute's notice with no windup" wouldn't even land you in a Top 10 spot for scariest dudes in the world, this guy is scrimping and saving his points to get the ability to do an overcharged static shock and he can't even do that right.

This story's scale feels really weird compared to what we know exists in the setting. It's like, we could easily have another 800 chapters of this with Takuma steadily growing and scraping along, and he might barely be qualified to be one of the ten thousand faceless losers who Madara Uchiha will effortlessly blow out of existence later.

I can totally buy that this is the setting and how it works. It's not even like this contradicts canon much or anything. How did Naruto and Sasuke learn this shit in a single day? Well, they're literally the reincarnations of two godlike beings responsible for the current state of the world. They've done this all a thousand times, and they're both (in their own ways) once-in-a-generation prodigies. It's just unusual to have the entire story focused on someone so thoroughly not exceptional in any way whatsoever.

If Uchiha Itachi had been dropped into Takuma's place with no clue what was going on, he'd have been ready to rock the Hokage's shit by now. Takuma has some very slight advantages from his unusual perspective. Still, I keep expecting them to materialize into some weird cheat that will let him succeed and become a contender, but it's been 100,000 words (the length of a reasonably thick book), and it hasn't happened yet.

I think the general sense I'm getting is that I'm reading the life story of an NPC. Perhaps I wouldn't feel that way in a different setting with a lower power scale. Naruto has me pretty biased toward thinking that the protagonist will be some world-shaking badass to make a difference in the story. I'm wondering if Takuma ever will, though. As it stands, it looks like he'd be fortunate to become the next Kosuke Maruboshi, and more likely, he'll wind up cut down in some routine border skirmish or something and go completely unlamented. He doesn't have protagonist powers or plot armor, the only reason he's not already dead is because the stakes have not involved life or death scenarios yet. This guy drinks failure straight from the carton.

Edit: It doesn't feel like there's a reasonable bridge between where this guy is and where it seems like he's trying to get. Nobody in this setting got anywhere through steady and diligent work over many years. If you're not already a goddamned superstar by the time you're fifteen, you're a washed-up background character that will never be anything in this setting.

 

[Pathetic]

I'm surprised the Mc doesn't know about the Rasengan which is the easiest s rank jutsu in Naruto on top of being very accessible it's also one of the most versatile jutsu in Naruto the Mc needs to stop trying to fight ppl on their terms and start cheating give yourself an advantage find something easy to use that you can do reliably that's where hes going but at this rate he'll end up dead in his first actual conflict

 

[Nictis]

I'm surprised the Mc doesn't know about the Rasengan which is the easiest s rank jutsu in Naruto on top of being very accessible it's also one of the most versatile jutsu in Naruto the Mc needs to stop trying to fight ppl on their terms and start cheating give yourself an advantage find something easy to use that you can do reliably that's where hes going but at this rate he'll end up dead in his first actual conflict

Click to shrink...

'If I knew something like this would happen, I would've read the Rasengan training chapters until I was dreaming about them,' Takuma regretted not being a massive Naruto fan. If he knew how Rasengan worked, not only could he learn it without forking out mission points, he would have a powerful B-rank jutsu or whatever rank Rasengan was considered— if it was good enough for the protagonist and the Fourth Hokage, it was more than good enough for him.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, I think people have pretty good points about the pacing of character growth doesn't really match to what most naruto fanfic sets you up to expect, but I'm enjoying it. It's both a reasonable growth rate in universe (He is functionally a year 1 academy student and is currently going through basic training. He's about at the level of Sasuke during the Wave Arc) and pretty enjoyable to read as he is growing but the story is more focused on his day to day struggle so it seems slow.

Anyways, I'm enjoying it.

I wonder if Takuma's kekkai genkai is the one that can sacrifice health and Chakra in order to make genjutsus real. Not sure what else the original might be from the Canon bloodlines. I'm also skeptical about the voice he hears that is pushing him to get stronger, we've seen both "his voice" and "a voice" bounce in his head, and his voice is a bit more vulgar.

Gonna be good to see him realize his specialty in genjutsu as well, I thought it would be that when he was struggling with the transformation jutsu and it's practically confirmed with the combination of the reactions to his clones and him seeing through genjutsu that erase people's presence at the test and with ANBU.